


Permanence

by KoynerSiggurosLevine



Series: Flickering Memories [3]
Category: Lost Boys (1987), Lost Boys (Movies), The Lost Boys (1987)
Genre: Blood, Bonding with the boys, Child Abuse, Laddie bonds when he can remember, Laddie is still human, Laddie is too mature for his own good, Laddie learns how to be a kid, Mental Instability, PTSD, Paul has a moment of realization
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-20
Updated: 2019-04-29
Packaged: 2019-05-25 14:47:23
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,591
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14979428
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KoynerSiggurosLevine/pseuds/KoynerSiggurosLevine
Summary: In the passing months, over those days he was lucid, Laddie manages to earn his place in the family of four vampires.





	1. Rainfall

**Author's Note:**

> Two steps I take getting closer and closer  
> And one more breath I take sends me further back

 

The times in which his mind was completely clear and without holes were often. But they were small moments of lucidity in the scale of things. His brothers eventually became curious and tried to get to get to know who he was behind the haze. It started with small questions, and watching him and how he saw the world around him. He never shared too much, he had always been kind of a reserved person. There was also the fact that he was young, and didn't even know much about himself. Time was practically an unknown concept to him. He didn't live by days, by the hours. He lived by the passing of the seasons. Unfortunately, even then he didn't seem to realize the season it was until they were already well into it. And every season had its moments of silence. And it was when all was quiet when it was most likely to happen. It was those quiet nights that brought him out. That boy that was twisted and broken at such a young age. And tonight was such a night.

 

It was a wet and rainy that night. His arms had his trademark dried blood staining it. The blood helped him remember, yet he hadn’t realized this yet. The blood was pretty fresh, as his brothers had went out last night and brought him along. They could wait a few days before going out again. He would go again in a week or so. About the time he forgets his name. On this night, however, he knew his name. And he knew his brothers names as well. David. Marko. Paul. Dwayne. Speaking of his brothers- He turned his eyes to see what his brothers were up to. Currently, the only one missing from the cave was Marko. David had him go and get some food for him. Being as scatterbrained as he was, he quite often forgot to eat. But it was okay. David never forgot. David made sure he ate something. His brothers were his memory, more often than not.

 

He slid off his bed. He'd been sitting there for a while, watching the rain pouring down, with the bolts of electricity illuminating the darkness in flashes. David was in his chair, watching over his domain. Paul was fiddling with his rockbox, a joint in his mouth. Dwayne was reading a book, seeming to be taking full advantage of the abnormally calm night. He made soft footfalls over to the entrance of the cave, and stood at the mouth of it for a moment. Then, with what seemed to be only a moment of hesitation, he slipped his jacket off, and walked out into the rain. He stood there, looking upwards into the sky, watching the raindrops streak down when the sky lit up with the bolt of electricity, the heavy raindrops quickly soaking his small form.

 

Slowly, though, as the dried blood caused pink streaks of liquid to drip from his fingers, something that had been buried deep inside of him stirred. Something he thought had been killed years ago. He didn't have a name for it, but he knew the feeling. He remembered it well. His lips curved up in a grin. It was small at first, but slowly it grew across his face. He held his hands up, arms up, a soft, secret smile on his face as he felt the raindrops hit his hands. It was followed by a bark of laughter, as he made a startling revelation.

 

His parents were dead. They were gone. Forever.

 

He wouldn't get beat for running around the cave. He knew his brothers wouldn't beat him. He could play. He could jump. He could cheer. He could scream in delight. He could be as wild and as loud as he wanted and the most that would happen was David telling him to keep it down.  _ He could be a kid. _

 

So he decided, fuck it. I’m going to be a kid.

 

He laughed, jumped in puddles, ran around, slipped and fell more than once, but that only caused another bark of laughter to escape from him because for once-

 

For once he felt  _ Alive. _

 

After who knows how long, he stood panting in the downpouring rain, exhausted. He was cold. He was wet. He was hungry. He turned back to the mouth of the cave. His brothers were standing there, watching. He grinned at them, and all four four of them smirked back at him, something in their gaze seeming bright.

 

It was a shame that the next day he couldn't remember it at all.


	2. Scars

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Paul gains a little understanding on why Laddie is the way he is.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Pray, for the children  
> You lost along the way  
> Still remember, the names, and faces  
> Cold. And abandoned  
> They cry, their fate put in your hands  
> When it's over, they come to haunt you  
> -Mary Elizabeth McGlynn, "One More Soul to the Call"

 

 

"Who are you! Where am I?" The child demanded, eyes wild and filled with panic. In response, the boy with a colorful jacket quietly murmured at him that he was in his home.

 

"Do you... Do you know who I am?" The child’s next question, hostility almost immediately draining out of his small form, leaving him unknowing and small. He wasn't prey, no, not at all. Just confused and.. panicked. The colorful clothed boy glanced over to the leader of this family of monsters. They locked eyes and the leader looked at their littlest brother and nodded.

“Tonight.” The leader spoke. The blood on their smallest siblings arms was gone and this was when he was at his most dangerous. The child’s memory so damaged that he swung violently through emotions of panic, confusion, anger, and bloodlust.

 

He had no identity. He ran on his instincts, much like a feral animal.

 

Static filled the cave as another one of the older family members fiddled with the rockbox in the background, a lit joint in between his lips. The colorful boy spared the rocker a quick glance before going back to watching their smallest.

 

Turning your back on the child when he was like this was extremely dangerous. The child had already stabbed both the colorful one and the leader once because of that very mistake. No one wanted to make that same mistake twice.

 

The child was back to blankly staring at his shoes, his eyes slightly unfocused as he picked at his fingers. He was rewinding. Rewinding and forgetting again. In a few minutes, the child would repeat those same two questions again.

 

The rocker cussed in the background and banged the rockbox, rattling something back into place and causing the music to start playing again. He whooped in celebration as it did so.

 

Foreigner's Juke Box Hero started playing underneath the rockers whoop of joy.

 

The little one’s head snapped up in the rockers direction. His mouth was moving silently. He was mouthing the words to the song. After a moment, the rocker glanced over and witnessed it. As the song progressed the child’s voice slowly rose in volume, starting hesitant and growing in confidence as the song progressed.

 

By the time the second verse came around all the boys were watching in rapt interest as he had jumped up and began to sing the song with a joy never shown before.

 

The child couldn't remember his own goddamn name, but he had this song completely memorized.

 

It was... _impressive_. And out of character.

 

The rocker snapped out of his stupor first and cheered at him, jumping up to join him.

 

"Yeah, little man!!!" He said cheering.

 

“Don’t get stabbed.” The colorful boy warned the rocker. The rocker only cheerfully flipped him off in response, continuing to dance with the child.

 

Although as the song ended, the child’s exuberant joy that was there visibly drained from him. He stilled, and his voice quieted, his shoulders slumping down.

 

"...I like that song." The child mumbled.

 

"I do too, bud!"

 

There was silence for a minute or two, the child sitting next to the rocker silently. The little ones hand found a discarded fork next to him and his hand wrapped around it, his eyes unfocused and unblinkingly staring at his shoes.

 

The rocker, noticing the silence put a hand on the child’s shoulder.

 

“Hey you good, little man?”  
  
The colorful boy’s shout of warning went unheard as the child stabbed the rocker in the hand with the fork.

 

“Who are you! Don’t touch me!” The child screamed, his eyes wild and untamed once more.

 

* * *

 

 

 

Several hours later, in the early hours of morning, the family of monsters returned back home with a bloodied and subdued child trailing in behind them. Their littlest one would be fine for another week or so now. The blood coating his arms would cement his memories and identity for now.

 

The child was back to his default state, where he wasn't quite tame, but he wouldn't attack out of the blue. He knew who his family was, and that he was safe. He sat on the rim of the fountain, deep in thought.

 

"Hey, little man?"

 

The bloodied child was taken out of his stupor and looked over at the rocker, who had just sprawled across the couch, a lighter and pack of cigarettes in his hand. It was bandaged, and the child couldn’t remember his older brother hurting himself recently..

 

"Yes?" The child muttered in reply, picking at his fingers. It seemed to be an unconscious habit of his.

 

"How do you know about that one song, Juke Box Hero?" The rocker asked, fishing a cigarette out of the box. Meanwhile, the child’s heart stuttered for a beat, and he had a flash of a memory.

 

_Late at night, in a small, trashed room, sitting on a ragged futon in the corner, music playing in the darkness.._

 

"Do... Do you have a record or tape of it?" The child asked, his eyes staring at the rocker with the intensity of a thousand suns.

 

"Sure do!” The rocker said with a grin. “I played that shit earlier and you rocked out to the song big time!"

 

The child sat there quietly for a moment, his face falling flat.

 

"I don't.... Remember that." The child replied hesitantly.

 

"I'd be surprised if you did!" His colorful brother called out in response, from the other side of the cave. It was hard to tell if it was sarcastic or not, as he lived on that fine line between the two expertly. The child fell silent, and the rocker turned away, lighting a cigarette and taking a drag. With others interruption, it seemed to bring the conversation to a halt.

 

Several minutes passed and the cave fell back into silence, the only noises being the colorful one’s pigeons as well as the sound of the leader of their family pacing quietly, a signature sign that the eldest of the group was deep in thought.

 

"It's. My favorite song." The child said softly after a couple minutes. The rocker took another drag of his cigarette and glanced back at the youngest briefly, curious.

 

"I was really small when the song came out. It made." The child continued, wrinkling his brow. "It made me.. happy."

 

Happy. The word felt strange. It was such an odd word for the littlest monster to utter, feeling foreign on his tongue, especially as a word to describe himself. The child shook his head and cleared his thoughts.

 

"I stole a record of the song, grabbed it and ran."

 

The rocker made an amused sound.

 

"I listened to it everyday. It was the only thing..." The little one's hands curled into fists and he glared at the rocky cave floor. A wave of cold anger rolled over him, yet... no bloodlust. Not now, at least.

 

"It was the only thing I owned. That was all mine." He continued.

 

The rocker looked at him as he said that. The child barely spoke of the details of his parents abuse towards him. The entire family all knew it was at least physical, though. It wasn't hard to guess that. He was beaten and bruised when they first found him, and he'd flinch if you reached at him too quickly. Also there was that time the child asked the quietest in their family if he knew why his parents threw him down the stairs once.

 ...That was an intense night.

 

"My parents thought the song was rotting my brain and making me have dreams of being a rockstar one day." The kid said, continuing.

 

"The thing is." His voice dropped to a whisper. "...That was never the dream that the song made me wish for."

 

"My parents didn't care, though. My father broke the record in front of me and hit me with the broken pieces." The little monster mumbled, rubbing a rather large scar on his right forearm, his eyes becoming distant. He was remembering. For the first time, the rocker found he didn’t want the child to remember. Not… Not _that_.

 

The cave went completely still.

 

If the kid had looked up from the ground he would've seen that all four boys had stopped. Their leader, frozen in mid-step, the quiet and stoic brother with the ability to pull the child back from the edge looking up from his book... and the colorful one, frozen with a needle in his hand, in the middle of sewing another patch on his jacket. He seemed the most visibly bothered by the words but quickly hid it before it could be noticed.

 

The boys were still, and they all looked at their little brother in all ways but blood. Really and truly looked at him.

 

The child’s arms were covered in miscellaneous scars, his hands absolutely battered and looked like his fingers had been broken more than once. There was a faded scar on the side of his face. And his left collarbone looked like it had healed up wrong. He was wearing a shirt. The rest of his family could only _imagine_ the amount of scars on his torso and back.

 

The rocker understood now. He understood why the child’s mind was so fucked. He'd been fighting for his right to survive. To live. He'd been fighting back desperately ever since he was practically a toddler, from what it looked like. If a kid were to remember all the atrocities that happened to him? Remembered the memories behind each scar? The rocker would rather forget if it too, if it were up to him. So he got it.

 

The littlest brother fell silent for a moment as the rocker let the words sink in. He was still rubbing the scar. The child opened his mouth as if he was about to speak, and then closed it. This happened a few times.

 

"...Could you put the song on again?" The child asked softly, after a couple minutes of debating whether or not to speak.

 

"...Yeah." The rocker said, rolling off the couch and fiddling with the rockbox. The song soon started playing again, and the rocker and the boys watched as the little monster curled into himself and  soaked in the song in silence, a stark contrast of how he reacted earlier in the evening.

 

His arms wrapped around himself as the chorus hit, the rocker quickly realizing the kid was giving himself a hug. He rested his chin on his knees and closed his eyes, taking in the song.

 

After the song finished the child silently left for bed, leaving his family of monsters alone with the information.

 

They did nothing with that information at first. Or so it seemed. A couple days later, the child woke up to find a walkman, headphones and the Juke Box Hero tape on his bed along with a short note.

 

_‘It’s yours. -P’_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dwayne or Marko is next! Thank you for your patience as I spent literally almost a year to post this. Comments and Kudos are always appreciated! I'll be back quicker than you'd think, don't you worry.


End file.
